Bittersweet Love Poem by Natasa To

We loved like summer loves the rain—
brief, bright, impossible to hold,
two hearts learning each other's names
while time was quietly growing old.

You were the warmth inside my hands,
the song I never learned to end,
the place where all my restless plans
could soften, even just a little, and mend.

But some goodbyes arrive too soon,
before the heart has learned to leave.
We watched our stars fade with the moon,
still wanting what we couldn't keep.

And sometimes, when the evening turns
the sky the color of your eyes,
I miss the way a candle burns—
beautiful precisely because it dies.

So I won't call our love a loss,
nor pretend it didn't hurt.
Some loves are bridges we must cross,
not homes where we are meant to stay.

I carry you, but not with chains;
I carry what was soft and true.
For even sorrow leaves a trace
of all the love it once knew.